12 March, 2015

Black Dragon Interview & Filly Funtasia Animations

If you're reading this, you've probably seen the Filly Funtasia trailers (if not, go watch them!), and if you have, you've probably seen the row of logos at the bottom. There's Dracco - owner of the Filly IP, BRB Internacional - the company making the show, Screen 21 - their studio, as well as "Black Dragon", a Chinese animation studio shrouded in mystery - until now! Recently, an interview on CCTV Español has revealed more - read it after the break.

The majority of the text is a Spanish-language interview with Walter Antonio McDaniel and Kevin Cheng, the founders of Black Dragon. McDaniel has worked at Marvel as a comic artist and the two are hoping to kickstart the Chinese animation business with their new studio, which is working on multiple shows, like Crystal Panda and Space Racer. But they’re also working on animating Filly Funtasia. There’s not much about that in the article, but accompanying the article is an embedded video where we can see a few Filly Funtasia animations! Besides the low res video embedded in the article, there's also a slightly higher res version available on YouTube, embedded below:

The video is unfortunately also in Spanish. If anyone wants to contribute a subtitling, that would be most appreciated! At 1:08 in the video, we can see an animation demonstration showing how the 3D model of Rose changes when they rotate and shift the position of the torso.

I really like her mane!

At 1:48, we can briefly see the editing program where Battiwigs performs a pointing animation while he holds a very befuddled looking mirror! The entire face isn't there - just the eyes. You can make out part of the program’s UI here.

u wot fily

At 4:07, there is a pre-rendered scene, played in a QuickTime player where Battiwigs throws something at the mirror whereupon it starts emitting a bright glow. The text in the bottom left corner appears to be a scene identifier that begins with “EP070”, and the top left has a timestamp reading “2014/12/22” - a date only a few months ago.

It's really blurry here. It's easier to see in the video.

They’ve also got lots of Filly pictures hanging on the walls! You can see a smug Lynn at 2:17, as well as a whole bunch of Filly pictures on the wall at 2:34, including Fabian. At 3:13, you can see Cedric briefly in the background. They definitely can’t avoid being constantly reminded about Filly Funtasia!

Is that Sparkle, too?

And that’s pretty much all the Filly Funtasia-related stuff from the video and interview! No information that reveals more about the future of the show, but a bit of a peek into the production process, and demystifying the most mysterious company involved in Filly Funtasia. And if this show doesn’t work out: maybe we can all watch Crystal Panda instead!